Why coach offered $5k to any sparring partner who could KO GSP

Former UFC middleweight and welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre appeared recently the JRE MMA Show, and told an odd story. He claimed that head coach Firas Zahabi would offer sparring partners $5,000 if they could knock him out. GSP was laughing as he spoke, and it was unclear if the five grand was a metaphor or if the coach really made the offer.

Zahabi recently appeared on the same show, and confirmed the story.

“We reach those high-intensity levels periodically through the year, and we have to do it a certain way so that it’s fun,” said Zahabi, as transcribed by Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie. “Georges was on your show, and he was saying I was trying to kill him in the practice room. He’s right, but I do it so rarely. I do it so periodically. I make it a joke. I brought the guys in a room, and I was watching them spar with Georges, and they don’t want to touch his face. This is when he was like a mega-star, when he was the champ. Nobody wants to try to double leg him; nobody wants to try to hurt him. They’re like, ‘I’m not going to come here in his house and try to show him.’ There’s a respect thing. They’re starstruck, these young kids.

“I would bring in these young kids, and I would be like, ‘Listen, guys.’ I would give them a speech: ‘The first guy to double leg him, the first guy to put him out, I’ll give a $5,000 reward. If you knock Georges out, I’ll give you 5,000 bucks. If you put Georges on his back, if you take him down, put him on his back, I’ll stop the whole practice and praise you for 20 minutes in front of everybody in the gym.’ And students don’t get praised by me very often. Georges would be like, ‘Oh my God, these guys are coming after me!’ So he would get riled up. I would do this periodically. We’re talking about world title fights, stuff’s on the line. I need these guys to show me where Georges is missing something. Because when you’re having this ‘perfect practice,’ and you win all the time, what do you work on? Nothing went wrong, there’s nothing to fix. So there were times I would really red-light him.”

Zahabi never had to pay the $5,000, but it was not for lack of trying by the sparring partners.

The Firas interview is characteristically awesome, as was GSP’s, which you can catch by clicking here.

Latest Trending

GSP's coach laments return of embarrassing MMA superstars

02/22/2019

Firas Zahabi: “The way the market changed, the way that the personalities changed, we went back to our Tito Ortiz days, and even worse to greater degrees. Georges was such a breath of fresh air because he brought class to our sport. We were not embarrassed of our sport when he was there … I was happy to say I’m part of the sport. But nowadays, you have so many superstars who are getting in trouble with the law. The way they behave, it makes the sport look uncivilized. And it’s not the case – 99 percent of our athletes are good people. But it’s unfortunate when the megastars embarrass us all." h/t MMAjunkie • Watch

6' 4", 225, former fighter and founder of 600-employee company on lessons from MMA

02/22/2019

BlueGrace Logistics CEO Bobby Harris: "I have to quote Rob Kahn - he's kind of like the godfather of (Mixed Martial Arts) in Tampa — when you're in a dominating position, dominate. In business, it's a critical thing to remember: When you're in a position to do something great, don't let it pass you by. Do it. We feel we're in a real interesting time when we can make a lot of impact, and we mean to do that." h/t Tampa Bay Times

This is the official website of Mixedmartialarts LLC. Commercial reproduction, distribution or transmission of any part or parts of this website or any information contained therein by any means whatsoever without the prior written permission is not permitted.